Heat establish offseason deadlines for guaranteeing trio of contracts

In a season in which the injury bug tore through their roster and just about everything has seemed to go wrong, the Miami Heat have gotten important contributions from some unlikely places. 

They're now taking measures to potentially keep those unlikely contributors with the team next season. According to Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel, the Heat have set up a guarantee deadline for Michael Beasley, and partial-guarantee schedules for Henry Walker and Tyler Johnson.

The Heat have given themselves until June 29 to decide whether to exercise Beasley's fully guaranteed team option for 2015-16. If they decide against it, he'll become an unrestricted free agent on July 1.

For Walker and Johnson, they have reportedly established multiple dates with various levels of guarantees, beginning on Aug. 1, which will allow the team to re-evaluate both players during Summer League. 

Winderman added that various guarantee dates have been established for James Ennis, who is, at present, on a partially-guaranteed deal that runs through 2016-17.

Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra touted the importance of using the team's summer program as a developmental tool. 

"From that standpoint, you always like to have continuity from one year to another year," he said. "That doesn't always work out that way. But we're investing so much time developing our young players that you don’t know when you see the jumps in improvement.

"Sometimes they happen immediately, sometimes incrementally. Sometimes getting some experience one year, having an offseason and a summer league again, then they come back a completely different player, just from sheer comfort level with our system. So, from that standpoint, we like the fact that we have guys that we've invested time in our system, and are getting more comfortable, but are also getting better."